Shoretel Phone System

We moved to a shoretel phone system a few months ago and I have been very happy with it.

We were running a Microsoft Response Point phone system, but Microsoft has stopped developing on that system and the has effectively killed it for the time being.

The Shoretel handsets are very clear, they sound very good. The administration of the system is completed with a web interface and is very easy.

Along with the Shoretel system, we purchased a SIP trunk from Bandwidth.com. This sip trunk allows us up to 5 phone trunks. The price of the SIP trunk is very inexpensive.

One of the neat features of the Shoretel phone system is the ability to have someone go to your phone from Voicemail. On your phone you will see the call-id plus the ability to pick up the phone call. It is a very neat feature.

Our CRM system is Connectwise and we have the ability within connectwise to click on a phone number and it will automatically dial the person. It is a neat feature that can save our staff valuable time.

They also have some other neat features. One of them is the ability to have an IP Phone talk to an SSL VPN device. This would allow you to easily deploy remote IP Phones for teleworkers. Most other solutions are very difficult or you are limited to a soft phone.

Shoretel also gives us a very nice demo kit to take to clients and show them how the phone system works. It is fully functional with the Phones having dial-tone and the ability to see how to administer the system. Most clients and prospects are impressed with that ability.

Overall, I am very happy with the Shoretel phone system. If I had to do it over again. I would have put the Shoretel phone system in place of the response point phone system.

If you are looking for a phone system, I would highly recommend the Shoretel system. If you are looking to resell a VOIP phone system, I would also recommend the Shoretel phone system.

Windows 7

I finally got a chance to load Windows 7 on a machine. My wife, who is also our company’s in-house accountant among other duties, needed a new computer.

I bought the computer a while ago for her and I finally had time this weekend to install it. It came with Windows Vista, but since it was not in production yet, I installed Windows 7.

I was very impressed with how easy the installation went. It found all of the hardware drives and the install went very quick. Most of the programs that we use for business, Connectwise and QuickBooks installed ok.

I had to disable UAC to get Connectwise and QuickBooks to play nice with each other.

The one thing that impressed me was the graphics with Windows 7, it seems must crisper than Windows Vista or XP. Plus, you can create scrolling Desktop images with your own photos.

The speed of Windows 7 is much improved over Vista. I run Vista on my laptop and at times it is very slow and not responsive. When I first installed Vista on my Laptop, I was not very happy at all. With Windows 7, I see no issues.

I also loaded Windows 7 on my wives old computer, which is an older dell computer. Windows 7 found just about everything except the Video Card and the audio card. Both of those did not have Windows 7 drivers, so I had to go back and install Windows XP drivers. After I did that it worked just fine. Windows 7 seemed just as fast as Windows XP on that older machine.

I think Microsoft got Windows 7 right. I would recommend anyone thinking about a new PC go with Windows 7. This is not the dog that Vista was.